Some of California’s voting complexities explained by a political expert

Paul and on this election day voters across 15 states of one territory are heading to the polls deciding on several consequential races one of the more high-profile races is here in California the senate seat to replace the late Diane Feinstein voters are being asked to vote twice on this race so here to explain is Samia Kamal she's a reporter at Cal matters thanks so much for being with us um so voters will be voting twice explain that yeah thanks for having me it is a little confusing but it h

as some up sides for voters um what voters are um selecting are when the governor appointed Leona Butler to replace uh Senator Diane Feinstein after she died um California law requires that a voters then get to approve that choice um so you will be voting to allow lefon Butler to complete that two-month term um until January and then voters will also be selecting a new Senator to um uh fulfill the next six-year term for Senate okay and then unlike some of the other states California is a free-fo

r-all with a jungle primary so for those unfamiliar what is the difference between a closed gen and Open primary yeah so um California is kind of a free-for-all it's meant to allow voters to have more choices you um Can Vote for any candidate regardless of your party and um the idea is that the top two candidates move on to the general election from the primary rather than have having one set Democrat and one set Republican it could be two Democrats which you know arguably it might be more repre

sentative of a state like California which is largely Democratic um so the in in our system um in California you do have to uh be registered as a republican to vote in the Republican primary and these rules are set by by the parties um but for the Democratic primary you don't have to be registered as a Democrat you just have to have requested the ballot and you have if you haven't already um you can go in person and um ask for that and um same for some of the um other parties that we have and wh

at if you're an independent um so if you have not already requested uh the ballot as an independent voter um then you would need to go in person um as an independent voter you can still vote in the Democratic um primary or um the Republican primary you just have had to request the ballot okay and we know voter turnout is key to every but so far it hasn't been that strong how does it compare to other primaries and why are so few people turning out yeah it's um you know I think what we're seeing a

s of yesterday is about 14% of Voters have um turned in their ballots and you know um voters still have all day today um I think experts expect that it might be somewhere around 30% of registered voters that's 30% of about 22 million registered voters in California so the numbers are low they're about on par with what we saw um you know primary races in general tend to be low turnout um you know it's uh I think people often feel like it's a given in California um the the outcome feels you know s

ort of predetermined but there are a lot of races you know in addition to the presidential race there's this as you mentioned this um high stake Senate race there's a lot of um State and you know down ballot races there's a proposition um but you know I think um it's hard when it's not the the general election it's hard when there's not you know these really high stakes um things on the ballot for people to get motivated yeah it is really difficult for people to be motivated but we are reminding

them to go to the polls all day seia from Kell matters thank you so much for being with us this morning thank you